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nodding at Jake who immediately withdrew from his post and joined Henry in the hallway outside, pulling the door closed silently behind him. The woman, wearing a long black trench coat and black stilettos, didn’t move. Tall and alarmingly slender, she was standing in front of a large-framed black-and-white photograph of two little girls who had grown up around the corner. She appeared unaware that anyone had entered the room.
    “They will be freshmen at Spelman in the fall,” he said.
    At the sound of his voice, she turned around slowly and Blue found himself face-to-face with the finest vamp he had ever seen. Her large dark eyes were heavily lined in black, and her hair was pulled back into a tight knot. Her golden skin was nothing like theusual pallor of her kind, but with that slash of red mouth and that emaciated frame, there was no mistaking what she was.
    “I’m Blue Hamilton.”
    “I’m Serena Mayflower,” she said without a smile. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Chapter Three

Cutting Edge
    Regina didn’t call her friend before she walked the four blocks from her house to Aretha’s studio on the top floor of the four-unit building where Blue still kept an apartment across the hall. Downstairs, Abbie conducted her visionary workshops on one side, and on the other, Blue maintained a fully furnished guest suite that he made available to a small circle of trusted friends, usually musicians looking for a place to rest up from the road and maybe jam a little if Blue was in the mood.
    At the moment, it was empty. Blue was at the West End News and Abbie was getting ready to head to Tybee Island for a few days, so Regina knew the sound of Bob Marley could be coming only from Aretha’s place.
    “There’s a natural mystic, blowing through the air …”
    Regina smiled to herself. This was such a familiar scene it was almost déjà vu. The day she’d arrived in West End, looking for anapartment, she had wandered around enjoying the carefully tended yards and blossoming pink dogwood trees. Watching women walking with their children past men who nodded their heads or tipped their hats and said good morning, she felt almost as if she had fallen down the rabbit hole and emerged in some kind of Afro-urban paradise. No wonder she didn’t remember seeing any For Rent signs. Who wouldn’t want to live in a neighborhood like this one?
    Turning down Lawton Street that day, she had heard Marley’s voice then, too, and followed the sound like a moth to a shimmering, dreadlocked flame. When she located the source and stopped out front to listen, she remembered thinking how perfect this building with the bright blue front door would be if only it had a vacancy. That’s when Blue Hamilton opened that very same door, and said that he owned the building and she could move in immediately if she wanted to, which, of course, she did.
    That was also the day she met Aretha Hargrove. When Regina first arrived in West End, Aretha was a young artist just finding her vision, always engaged in projects about which she remained passionate even as she moved on to the next one. The Door Project was one of the most visible and it was in full swing the day the two women met. Aretha had recently read a book that said some North African people believed painting the front door a certain shade of turquoise was the best way to ward off the evil eye. The same article also said that getting small children to make handprints in the wet paint increased the effectiveness of the mojo.
    Aretha went to Blue and proposed painting the front doors of all his properties as part of a project that would be both aesthetically pleasing and possibly spiritually significant. Blue agreed, although he drew the line at the handprints, and Aretha did about fifteen or twenty doors before a rumor started that those blue front doors signified a special relationship with Mr. Hamilton, which set in motion so many requests for the doors that Aretha had to hire a crew